


Call of the Woods

by Latras, SpaceMacgyver



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27313837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Latras/pseuds/Latras, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceMacgyver/pseuds/SpaceMacgyver
Summary: It's 12 am, in the middle of the night, when Nick and Judy receive a call from a lost area of the Meodowlands' forest. It is their duty to bring assistance to him, no matter the hour, no matter the place, no matter what could happen....
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Zootopia is Disney's propriety 
> 
> This oneshot is a Halloween collab with Latras, that I gladly thank for his precious help ^^.
> 
> Enjoy and Happy Halloween!

**Chapter 1: Night Shift**

_12 am, Precinct One Headquarters_

The Station was deserted at this late hour of the night, only a few officers kept watching on the sleeping city. These few officers were gathered in the breakroom and consisted of three officers; a sleeping rhino, Nick, and Judy.

The bunny was barely awake, lying on her desk, and trying to fight sleep with some computer work and coffee. She was more scrolling down the pages of the reports than actually reading them. 

Nick, however, was chilling. He was slumped in his chair, feet on his desk, playing a video game on his phone.

Judy straightened up with difficulty, and the fox was doing the same thing.

“Carrots….” he snorted “if only you could see your face”

Judy let out a sigh of exasperation.

“You…..dumb...fox” she yawned before collapsing on the desk again.

Nick burst out laughing and Judy quickly woke up.

“Oh come on!”

“That was per-fect!” he teased

Judy tilted her head, confused.

“For what?”

“My gallery of embarrassing photos!” He said, showing her the photo of her he had took a second ago.

“You..” she squinted her eyes “Give me that!”

The bunny jumped on Nick, squabbling to get the phone

“Can you reach?” he laughed, raising his paw further up into the air to prevent the bunny from recovering the picture and deleting it.

Suddenly, a message popped up on Judy’s PC, stopping the argument.

_To all available units, we have an emergency call from the Meadowlands district, in the Theodore Moosevelt National Park area. A driver seems to have had a breakdown and feels like he’s being chased. Coordinates:_ _Latitude: -92.535 Longitude 64.676_ _._

Nick raised an eyebrow 

“Who the hell goes on a road trip in a national park at 12 am?”

Judy look at the message in more details

“We gotta go.”

Nick looked surprise

“You can’t be serious...we’re like...the farthest precinct from there!”

“We’re the only precinct still open right now! And, it’s our duty!” 

Nick still looked hesitant.

“Do you really wanna spend the next 4 hours doing nothing?”

The fox sighed, she was right.

“Alright, but it was YOUR idea” he pointed at her.

Judy smiled. The partners stealthily left the room, making sure not to wake their massive colleague, and went to the garages. They took the most situation-appropriate vehicle they had; a large and powerful 4x4 with some survival equipment.

Once they were buckled in, they left the station and drove towards the Meadowlands, and the caller’s last known location. 


	2. Nocturnal Vibes

The partners were slowly approaching the mammal’s last known location. The night was dark..truly dark. No moon, no stars, no source of light except their front beams. In addition, a thick fog was settling on the forest.

They could barely see what was in front of them.

Judy was driving slowly, being careful not to hit something or fall in a ditch, she looked nervous, and her partner had noticed.

“No surprise that this guy got himself lost out here.”

“Yeah…”

“Carrots, is everything ok?”

“I...yeah, just that...I feel like...I dunno”

“Are you….” he paused and suddenly jumped on her, acting like a savage mammal 

“Scared?!”

Judy jumped in her seat and turned the car suddenly, throwing the fox back into his seat.

“Stupid fox!” She smiled, seeing the vulpine back in his place.

Nick rubbed the back of his head

“You could have been more easy on that one” he groaned “it was just a joke”

“We bunnies are good with...those kinds of things” she paused “Anyway, are we there yet?”

He looked at the digital map

“Almost, we’re about 2 kilometers out.” he paused  “But seriously, you look nervous, you sure you're alright?”

“I dunno, I feel….that for some reason. Surely some stupid ancestral thing, you know; instincts”

“Yeah, I guess you’re glad to have a nocturnal predator partner!” he giggled “We used to be the kings of the night!”

She smiled

“I hope you’re not afraid of the dark!”

“Fear of the dark?” he snorted “And what? Monsters? Ghosts? Aliens? Haha! Those things only scare kits!”

“You sure? So I can do any spooky thing and nothing would make you jump or even tremble?”

“Anytime, carrots” he gave her a determined gaze.

“Anyway, here we are.”

They saw an abandoned car parked near a gigantic tree. They were in the middle of the forest, far from anything. The car lights were still on, and even more strangely, the engine was running. 

Judy parked their cruiser a hundred meters away from it, just in case. 

They got out with their flashlights and approached it.

“Hello? Sir? It’s the police! we’re here to help” Judy called.

She called again, and again but no response came. All she could hear was a slight breeze blowing through the leaves.

Nick got closer, even though the bunny clearly signalled him not to.

The vehicle was empty, the driver;s side door was open, with the keys still in the ignition.

“There’s no one here…” he resumed. ”But whatever happened, they left in a hurry.”

“There must be something, take a look around.”

They both looked around for a few minutes, looking for the lesser detail. Judy found nothing, everything looked normal in and out of that car. It was as if he had just...vanished.

“Carrots….you should come see this.” Nick called from the dense forest’s edge

She approached the kneeling fox and pointed her light at what he was looking at, a wallet but not only….there was something viscous on it, it was red…...it was blood.

She looked around, the whole area was covered in blood, the grass but also the leaves and the trees.

“That’s a lot of blood. Whoever that guy was, he isn’t part of this world anymore...”

She looked around more, and what she found on a tree froze her blood. Claws marks, huge ones, way bigger than any mammal she knew of.

“We need to investigate what happened...but we need reinforcements.”

They jumped when they suddenly heard a loud metallic crushing sound, like in a car crash. It came from behind them. They ran in that direction and stopped, completely astonished.

Their giant vehicle was totally destroyed, stuck in a tree 20 meters above the ground. 

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Nick cursed. “How the heck is it….THERE?!”

“Dear God….” Judy paused, rubbing her temples “I..I’ll need a sec if you don’t mind…”

“Yeah, me too...”

They sat on the dirt track and tried to think about what just happened. They stayed like that for minutes, silent, not able to find answers for anything. Nick and Judy looked more and more nervous, that forest was calm, way too calm... 


	3. A Long Walk

“So, what do we do now?” Nick said, turning his attention for the totaled cruiser to his partner. He was terrified, but he didn’t want that to crack his usually smug and calm exterior. He put on a weak smile.

“I-I don’t know… Maybe we could radio back for help?”

Nick pulled his police-issue radio from his belt. Trying to turn it on and tune it only created a static noise.

“That’s a problem...try yours.”

Judy turned her radio on and got a similar result. She shook her head, pulling out her cell phone. No signal.

“Well, it looks like we’re alone.”

“Maybe we can find someone living in the woods?”

Judy swung her flashlight into the tree, the beam barely dispersing the darkness that gathered there.

"I don’t have a better idea. Let’s go, Nick.”

There was something off about the forest. Nick had never bought into the ‘sixth sense’ stuff that some mammals believed in before then, but this trek through the foggy underbrush was changing his mind. There was a deep unsettling feeling that encroached on the two officers and made them jump at every noise and shiver at the unnatural cold. The dark was deeper than usual and Judy could barely see more than a meter beyond her, even with the high-powered flashlight she had. Nick was faring a bit better with his vulpine night vision, but even he could only make out basic shapes beyond the trees that surrounded them.

“How long have we been walking?”

Nick checked his watch, and was surprised to see that it was almost two AM.

“Woah, almost two hours. We should have come across something by now. Unless we’ve been walking in circles.”

Just as Nick finished his sentence, he could make out a small light deeper in the forest.

“Hold on, I see something.”

“What is it?”

“I dunno, it looks like some sort of light.”

Nick quickened his pace with Judy in tow. The light got brighter as they approached and he recognized it as some sort of lightbulb.

“Seems like someone’s out here after all.”

Judy could now see the light herself. It was a small bulb hanging off of a porch roof of some sort of wooden shack. It looked to be in a state of advanced disrepair, the only window that was visible had spider cracks adorning it, and moss and vines were climbing up the wooden walls. Judy was sure it was abandoned, but the power was still somehow on. Nick figured out why it was before her.

“Look at that, on the roof. Solar panels.”

Judy looked up at the blue metallic things. She hardly expected something so expensive to be out here, much less mounted on a crumbling shack.

"Must be an automated system with batteries. I think this place hasn’t been inhabited for years.”

Nick nodded and made his way to the front door of the shack, which was standing wide open. It didn’t look like there was any forced entry, and the rusty key was still stuck in the lock. Someone had left in a hurry.

The cabin’s interior was dusty but in surprisingly good condition considering its outward appearance. The furniture was left where it had apparently been for years. There were even a few folders and sheets of paper in readable condition on it. Judy walked over to it while Nick was inspecting the rest of the house. She blew the dust off of the top sheet and began reading.

_ July 17th, 2013. This might be my last day in these forsaken woods. I’ve been here for years on end, but never once have I seen him. Of course, I have heard him, but he eludes me. I came into this wanting to just get one picture to prove myself right, but I appear to have bitten off more than I can chew. The woods are all-enveloping, and I fear I cannot escape in time. He is coming, and I am not prepared. _

“What the?” Judy muttered to herself as she flipped through the various other documentation on the table. She found maps and diagrams of the woods they were in, with areas circled in red. The area that they had found the abandoned vehicle in was marked with a red x and labeled “Danger, hunting grounds.”

“What’s all this?”

Judy nearly jumped out of her uniform. Nick had managed to sneak up behind her and was reading over her shoulder.

“Nick! Don’t do that!”

The fox smiled and walked to the opposite side of the table, flipping through the papers that rested on that side. They spent almost a quarter of an hour looking through the strange documentation before Judy’s ears perked up.

" Did you hear that?”

Nick shook his head.

" No, what was it?”

To Judy, it had sounded like some sort of tornado siren, but very faint. She assumed it was from one of the small towns scattered around this area, but there was something off, like it was malfunctioning. Whatever it was, it made her uneasy. She put the papers down and walked to the door.

" Well, we appear to have another missing mammal on our paws. let’s-”

She was cut off by the same noise she had heard seconds ago, but this time it was much, much louder, almost as if it were just a few hundred meters away from them. Judy looked up to where the siren was coming from, but the dark made it impossible for either mammal to see where it was coming from.

"Uuuh, Judy? Do you think we should, um, leave?”

"Nick, we were sent out here to do a job, and I intend to do it. There might be mammals that need help out here.”

Nick realized he couldn’t argue with his partner, and they set off towards another red marked spot on the old map. Judy had a hunch that they would find more clues there, and maybe even figure out what was making the noise.


	4. Him

“Judy, I really think that we should leave…”

They’d been walking for nearly half an hour, with nothing to show for it. Judy shrugged off her partner’s comment and re-checked her map. They should be getting close. Just as she realized that, they came out into a clearing. 

“Nick, I think this is it.”

Nick, having better night vision, looked around the area they found themselves in. There were a concerning amount of fallen trees scattered around, certainly more than could’ve been natural from storms or lightning strikes. 

“Judy, I-”

He cut himself off when he noticed something in the middle of the clearing. He couldn’t be sure from here, but it looked like something. Something he’d seen maybe once or twice during his time on the force. Something bad.

“Nick? What is it?”

Nick walked closer to the object, fearing what he’d find. Judy followed him, curious to find out what was happening. As he approached it, his fears were confirmed, and he nearly screamed.

“Oh, shit.” Was all he could say.

Lying before them was a corpse. Not just any corpse, but one that had been absolutely pulverized and nearly ripped in half by whatever had killed it. Nick couldn’t even tell the gender or species of the mammal from the bloody lump on the forest floor.

“Nick, is that, oh sweet cheese and crackers…”

Nick, although not wanting to, crept closer to the body. It matched the size of the car they had found.

“Well, I think we have our caller.”

Judy was going to respond, but they both jumped back when they heard the noise again. It was coming from a different direction this time.

The partners stood there, speechless. The sheer shock of seeing a pulverized corpse and the prospect of something moving around in the woods emitting tornado siren noises left their brains in overdrive.

“Judy, what do we do?”

The rabbit shook her head, clearing her thoughts, and checked the map and compass.

“The edge of the forest is south of us, there’s a road there. Hopefully we can get phone or radio reception, or hitchhike a ride back to the precinct. We aren’t staying in these woods longer than we have to.”

Nick nodded vigorously in agreement, and Judy began half walking, half jogging towards the edge of the forest. By her estimates, it’d take an hour to finally be out of the trees.

The problem was, they didn’t have an hour. It was only forty minutes later when Nick stopped the pair.

“Judy, wait a second.”

Judy halted, and her partner put a finger to his lips and pointed to their left. Judy looked, and could see something moving.

“Nick, what is-”

The vulpine stared up at the treetops, trying to identify what he had seen moving out of the corner of his eye seconds ago. He slowly scanned the horizon, then stopped. There was a tree that was at least a dozen meters taller than the others. He looked harder at it, and almost fainted from shock and fear.

That was no tree. What he had thought were strangely elongated branches were arms and legs, and the strange form at the top of the figure was some sort of loudspeaker, which would explain the noise. Worst of all, it was moving. Moving towards them.

“JUDY! RUN!”

He didn't have to tell her to. As soon as he recoiled in fear, the thing had come into Judy’s visual range, and she saw as much of it as he did. They simultaneously broke out into a dead sprint, trying to outrun it.

Nick was panting with the exertion of sprinting through the woods. Every so often, he’d take his eyes off of the ground to look back over his shoulder, and every time he did it was closer. Judy was positive they were almost at the edge of the forest, but she wasn’t sure if it would stop the thing. Then, she saw it. A two-lane strip of concrete cutting through the woods. A road.

“NICK! WE’RE ALMOST THERE!” 

Nick looked up, and nearly wept with joy when he realized they were almost home free. His hopes were dashed on the rocks of fate when he heard something behind them.

_*boom*_

_*Boom*_

_*BOOM*_

Nick skidded to a halt on the leaves covering the ground when he realized something was blocking his path. Something that wasn’t there before. Looking up, he saw something that made his blood run cold and his brain go into instinctual overdrive.

A massive leg had appeared in-between them and the road, blocking their escape. Nick was too terrified to look up, but Judy did. And she regretted it.

The leg was attached to an impossibly elongated torso, with a matching leg and spindly arms. The creature’s head was, in fact, some sort of loudspeaker or siren. Judy froze in place.

They stood there for what felt like hours, but must’ve only been seconds. Nick was absolutely sure they were going to die out here.

He was right. 

A gigantic hand descended from the sky, reaching toward them. At the same time, a deafening noise engulfed the forest, making the partners cover their ears in pain. Nick couldn't hear anything else, and Judy curled up on the ground, just wanting it to end. The hand touched the ground, and silence enveloped the woods yet again.

  
  
**THE END**


End file.
